Over 60 percent of voters think Facebook has too much power: poll

More than 60 percent of U.S. voters believe Facebook has too much power, according to a new poll administered amid intensifying scrutiny in Washington of the country’s largest tech companies.

Sixty-one percent of voters polled by Fox News said they believe Facebook has “too much power.” Forty-eight percent said the same of Google, followed by Amazon at 45 percent and Apple at 43 percent.

{mosads}Only 35 percent of those polled, however, said they believe “big technology companies” are a greater potential threat to the country’s future than “big government.” Fifty-eight percent of voters told Fox News pollsters they believe “big government” poses the larger threat. 

The poll emerges as the Trump administration and Congress ramp up their investigations into the market power of tech companies such as Facebook and Google. The House Judiciary Committee earlier this month kicked off its antitrust investigation into the top tech giants, while the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and Department of Justice are reportedly gearing up to conduct probes into the companies’ potentially anticompetitive practices. 

The FTC has also been investigating Facebook over potential data privacy violations for more than a year, but tech critics have grown frustrated with the agency as the probe continues, saying it should quickly announce stringent penalties for the powerful social media company. 

Sarah Miller, co-chairwoman of the Freedom from Facebook campaign, said in a statement that the poll indicates “consumers are sick and tired of Facebook’s reckless behavior.”  

“The FTC needs to stop dragging their feet and find Facebook in violation of its consent decree, and break up its monopoly,” Miller said. 

Facebook in 2012 reached a consent decree with the FTC over charges that it had deceived users into thinking that their information was private when it was not. Under that decree, Facebook is barred from “making misrepresentations about the privacy or security of consumers’ personal information.” 

The FTC is considering a multibillion-dollar fine against Facebook for violating that consent decree, and the company recently said it expects to pay up to $5 billion.   

The Fox News poll, conducted with help from Beacon Research and Shaw & Company, surveyed 1,001 randomly chosen registered voters from June 9 to June 12. The survey has a margin of error of 3 percentage points.